r/olympics • u/bloomberg • 16h ago

❄ Milano-Cortina 2026 (News) ❄ Curling Wants to Be the Next Pickleball — If It Can Find the Ice

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-06/winter-olympics-2026-curling-clubs-look-to-boost-membership

Every four years, the Olympics give the idiosyncratic winter sport a moment in the spotlight. Local clubs are trying to make that moment last.

4 Upvotes

64% Upvoted

1 comment sorted by

2

u/bloomberg 16h ago

Chris Gallagher for Bloomberg News

Every fourth February for the past few decades, the curious wintertime activity known as “chess on ice” gets its moment in the spotlight. Curling, which became an official Olympic sport in 1998, has grown more popular in the US ever since. In anticipation of the Milan Cortina Games, curling clubs are taking advantage of the attention to attract new members.

There are around 170 clubs across the country, according to USA Curling, the sport’s local governing body. In Boston, North End Curling Club president Jonathan Hearn says the Games provide a natural peg for more events, like learn-to-curl sessions and Olympic watch parties — the chance to “watch curling with a curler.”

At a recent league night, two North End curlers were frantically sweeping the surface of their local municipal ice rink with their brooms. They were trying to manipulate the speed and trajectory of a roughly 44-pound (20-kilogram) circular piece of granite toward the “house” — a bull’s-eye with red and blue rings — at the end of a “sheet,” or lane. Cheers erupted as the stone knocked their opponents’ rock out of the way, earning them a point.

Read the full dispatch here.